UPA presidential candidate and former finance minister Pranab Mukherjee got the magic figures (around 5.18 lakh worth of votes) to become new President of India. He got the required number during the ongoing counting of votes at Parliament House here on Sunday. The formal announcement to this effect will be made soon by the Election Commission of India after completion of the counting process.
Mukherjee got the magic figure during the counting of votes of Maharashtra. Though counting of votes of 15 more states are still awaited, it will only have academic value.
As expected, the UPA constituents and its key supporting parties like SP, BSP, RJD and others had supported Mukherjee. Besides, he also got the support of opposition parties like Shiv Senaand JD(U).
Mukherjee defeated the BJP-backed presidential candidate P A Sangma. The former NCP leader Sangma got his votes mainly from the MPs belong to BJP, BJD, SAD and AIADMK. Among MLAs, he got votes mostly in BJP-ruled states like Goa, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. Interestingly, the BJP-ruled Karnataka witnessed cross-voting during Presidential poll. Ongoing counting shows that over a dozen BJP MLAs might have voted in favour of Pranab Mukherjee who got 117 votes. Sangma got 103 votes in the state.
Mukherjee got the overwhelming support of Parliamentarians (Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs) in the President's election securing a vote value of 3,73,116. He got the remaining vote value (1.36lakh) to reach the magic number (majority mark of 5.18) lakh) from the MLAs who cast their votes in his favour.
Sangma, on the other hand, managed to get a vote value of only 1,45,848 in the counting of votes of MPs. His vote value increased to over 2.2 lakh when votes of MLAs of BJP-ruled states counted.
A total of 748 MPs voted in the election on July 19. Of the total votes, Mukherjee got 527 votes while Sangma got 206. Fifteen votes including that of SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav were invalid.
Counting of ballots began amidst tight security in Parliament House here in the presence of authorised representatives of both Mukherjee and Sangma at 11am. First trend came around 1pm after counting of votes of all MPs.
Authorised representatives if both the Presidential candidates inspected the seals of the ballot boxes and the counting began after ascertaining that they were not tampered with.
As many as 95 per cent of the 4,896 electors -- 776 MPs and 4,120 MLAs -- had exercised their franchise on Thursday at the polling centres set up in Parliament House and 30 other states and Union territories with assemblies.
All the ballot boxes from the states had reached Parliament House by Saturday and were kept in a strong room.
The vote of SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav had been declared invalid by the Election Commission on the ground that he violated the code of secrecy by revealing his ballot. Yadav had initially voted for Sangma and then tore the ballot paper when he realised his mistake.
From: Times of India
